The Mafulu eBook

SECTION I

I. Classification.

1. Fuyuge:—­The first specimen of any
lanugage of the Fuyuge group was collected by the
Rev. James Chalmers in 1879. This was called by
him Kabana, and was printed in a collection of vocabularies
in 1888. [181] From a note on the original MS., the
vocabulary was assumed to be the dialect of a village
on Mount Victoria (called by Chalmers Mount Owen Stanley).
[182] But as Sir William MacGregor pointed out, [183]
there are no villages on that mountain, hence Chalmers,
in assigning a locality to the vocabulary some time
after its collection, must have been mistaken.
The language of Chalmers’ Kabana is nearly the
same as that of a vocabulary collected by Mr. A. Giulianetti
at the village of Sikube in the Upper Vetapa or Vanapa
valley, north of Mount Lilley. This was published
in 1898. [184]

A few words from the village of Kambisa, in Sirima
(Chirima) valley were published in the Annual Report
on British New Guinea for 1905-6, [185] and I have
since been favoured by the compiler, the Rev. P. J.
Money, with a fuller list. The Rev. Father Egedi
published in 1907 a vocabulary of Fuyuge along with
his account of the Tauata or Afoa tribe. [186] Dr.
Strong collected a vocabulary from the natives of
Korona, a village situated close to the head of Galley
Reach. This was collected with the help of a Motu-speaking
native, and contains a few apparently Melanesian words.
Dr. Strong was spontaneously told that these had been
introduced from the coast in quite recent times. (Cf.
Sec. III.)

The words in the comparative vocabulary are taken
from an extensive collection in Mafulu by the Rev.
Father Egedi. They represent the same dialect
as the Grammar in Appendix I.

That Mafulu, Kambisa, and Korona, with Sikube and
Kabana, represent the same language is plain.

The Kabana pronoun nahu, I, the Sikube na(nio)
I, nu(ni) thou, and the Kambisa na,
I, nu, thou, hu, he, agree with the Fuyuge
na, na(ni), I, nu, nu(ni) thou, u,
he. The Kabana nauera, mine, is the Fuyuge
naula. The Kambisa nara-ndo, mine,
nura-ndo, thine, hura-ndo his, also
show a suffix ndo corresponding to Mafulu ne
in naula(ne), mine, nula(ne) thine, ula(ne)
his, and in the vocabulary the Kambisa suffix nda
corresponds to the Korona de in the word for
“chest.” There is, however, no evidence
that the Korona de is equivalent to the Mafulu
ne. The word given in Sikube for “woman,”
amuri, is the Fuyuge plural amuli, “women.”